


The Third Time

by drifterskip



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: BAMF!Finch, Drama, Hurt!Reese, M/M, One Shot, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-12
Updated: 2012-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-29 09:41:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/318504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drifterskip/pseuds/drifterskip
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes time and stressful circumstances for Finch and Reese to comprehend just how much they could mean to each other. Feelings are dangerous. Then again, nearly everything they do is dangerous.</p><p>When he was forced to do so, Finch didn’t just break people, the way Reese did. No, Finch <i>destroyed</i> them, if need be. To protect the things in this life that Finch held dear, he could and would stop at nothing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Third Time

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings:** Spoilers through _Person of Interest_ episode 1x10. Violence, shown and implied. Clear but not explicit m/m pairing.  
>  Also, this is my first fic for AO3, so that probably needs a warning. ::grin::  
>  **Word Count:** approximately 5500 words  
>  **Prompt:** _"There is a very simple difference between Reese and Finch: Reese breaks people; Finch destroys them." I would like a slash fic inspired by the above line, featuring Hurt!Reese and BAMF!Finch. (No non-con please.)_ Written for LJ's flatliner345 with much respect and regard in our PoI fic comm's New Year's gift exchange.  
>  **Author’s Notes:** Thanks to my buddy tobimonkee from LJ for the great feedback.
> 
> Originally posted here: [The Third Time, at the Person of Interest Fanfic Community](http://pofinterest-fic.livejournal.com/36363.html). Check out the comm; it's a good place with good people.
> 
> Hope you enjoy the story. Cheers! --Skip

...

The first time Mr. Reese took a bullet while in the employ of one Mr. Finch, it was when the judge’s kid was taken. He’d been just a little too late to get the drop on the kidnappers and wound up with a small-caliber scrap of metal in his shoulder for his troubles.

Reese had lain on the sidewalk for a few moments -- too winded to be much surprised and too frustrated to feel much pain -- until he simply picked himself up and stalked back to the library. Back to the library and to Finch. Finch had quietly patched him up while Reese seethed and roiled and generally worked himself into high dudgeon, stopping only to get a clean shirt before he was back snapping off angry questions to his bespectacled counterpart.

The wound hadn’t troubled him much and Reese soon dismissed it as inconsequential. He and Finch dealt with the number: Sam Jr. was summarily returned to Judge Gates.

Mostly unrelated to that, Reese learned that Finch liked Eggs Benedict and was maybe, possibly, starting to trust him a little.

...

The second time Reese was shot in this line of work, it was a lot less... neat. There wasn’t one small-caliber anything; there were two messy rounds from a sniper. One to his side which burned as it tore through him and did other cliches that boiled down to a lot of pain and force that pushed Reese to the ground, another to his leg that was probably meant to keep him there. It wasn’t a kidnapping but betrayal of another kind. And it didn’t involve Reese stalking back to receive first-aid attention from a mildly worried Finch.

Instead, Reese activated his earbud and thought to try to say goodbye to the reclusive man he would have, in better circumstances, called a friend. Or more. It wasn’t very clear what all he’d said or what all he’d meant to say. Nothing about that night was very clear.

Reese had a faint recollection of garish fluorescent lights in the stairwell he thought of as the last place he’d ever see, of Finch saying things like, “It’s not over, John,” and the roar of a car engine. Everything else about that time was hazy for the agent. He was dimly aware of telling Finch to stay away and that Finch had done the exact opposite. Reese thought he should be angry about that but he felt too dizzy and pained to approach anything resembling angry when he watched the black sedan screech toward him, when Finch limped from the vehicle and hurried to catch him.

Carter was involved somehow, helping Reese into the backseat of Finch’s car and saying something to the genius. The sensation of movement. Then: nothing. A blessed relief.

The haze continued through the next couple of days and Reese only later knew how much time had gone by, when Finch told him of the involvement of Megan Tillman and how the good doctor extracted the bullets from his body and kept him in a thankfully medicated stupor. There were memories from that time that Reese and Finch didn’t speak of. Like waking up on one of the beds in the library to find Finch asleep at what was surely a painful angle in the chair he’d drawn close. Like how Reese was almost certain Finch had passed a cool damp cloth over his forehead more than once and murmured comfort. Like how Finch would hold his hand and talk to him when he was pretty sure Reese was either asleep or insensible.

The events of those days are stories unto themselves... though for a long time, Reese was fine with leaving them untold and Finch was equally content to keep the pages of that particular book closed. Nothing was resolved, therefore, but it allowed their working relationship to continue on much as it had. When that time was over and Reese started to recover, by some silent though mutual agreement, neither man discussed ‘that time’ anymore. The second time someone had to dig bullets out of his skin, the second time he was badly hurt working for (with) Finch and for the numbers.

...

The _third_ time Reese was shot, it changed things.

The circumstances were what Reese would later call a ‘Mexican standoff’ only to find Finch correcting him and saying that while popular usage may have muddled this term to include a situation with only two groups involved, traditionally -- and therefore most precisely -- three parties are present, each facing off against the others. It was a matter of semantics that Reese dismissed and redefined as simply being in the wrong place at a very wrong time.

The machine had given them a number which, after tireless research on the part of Finch and a lot of sleuthing and tailing on the part of Reese, yielded the fact that their person of interest was no victim. Not in the strictest sense. A ruthless killer -- Reese thought that if Elias found him first, he might think the man an asset and wish to recruit him rather than just ‘put him out of business’ -- and a weapons dealer who was going by the improbable name of Pelham Grenvile. When Reese pointed out that it sounded familiar, Finch acidly pointed out that the pseudonym was borrowed, misspelt, from the given name of author P.G. Wodehouse.

To compress several days of surveillance and supposition: they were dealing with someone who believed himself educated and wasn’t too far off the mark, meticulous in his business dealings if not always in his social life, and someone who had been in the business long enough to believe he had a leg up on the competition. Why had the machine spit his number out? What was different now?

Finch believed a rival might make a play for a shipment of automatic weapons and posited a scheme involving Reese posing as a potential buyer, muscle that was financially backed by Finch in one of his aliases, to ascertain the scope of Grenvile’s operation. It might, Finch believed, provide a suitable cover and get them closer to their target.

Why Reese rebelled at this particular idea, at this particular time, he couldn’t say. Finch joined him in the field before, though Reese asked for his assistance less since Finch witnessed that car bomb. Something in Reese’s heart had seized after the explosion and it hadn’t been fully calmed by the ragged sound of Finch’s breathing over the comm line a second or two later. He’d tried to keep it from hampering their work. So when Reese needed an extra pair of hands or eyes and Lionel couldn’t be brought to heel, Reese enlisted Finch.

But something about this scenario set off warning bells in Reese. He was used to following his gut and trusting his intuition. At Finch’s proposed plan, gut instinct was screaming at him, telling him not to put Finch in that sort of danger. Arms traffickers were not like powerful executives that could be destroyed with a few strokes of computer keys, a well-aimed checkbook, and an impassive stare. These people -- Grenvile and his associates -- would chew Finch up and spit him out. Reese, completely believing this, shared these thoughts with the billionaire.

Which (the reader will be unsurprised to hear, given the stubborn tendencies of both men) led to a disagreement. Which led, very quickly, into a fight. The kind of fight where one of the people involved tends to storm off in the end with even more resolve than before. As Reese watched Finch’s stiff-shouldered form exit the library with the same sort of grim determination the agent himself had shown on half a dozen occasions, he wondered just when it was that he’d decided that Finch’s safety was worth more than anything else Reese could think of.

What followed was a comi-tragic series of errors about which even a lengthy discussion a few months after the event couldn’t convince either Finch or Reese that the whole mess hadn’t singularly been their own fault. It did prove, however, how simpatico the two had become. Finch’s proposed scenario only would have worked if he’d had Reese to serve as the go-between. Though he walked seemingly without fear into Grenvile’s warehouse and coolly handled the irate questioning of the arms dealer himself while a number of his men kept their weapons trained on him, Finch should have known that Reese would follow him at a safe distance. And Reese should have known that once their perimeter had been breached by this calm, disabled guy who talked about holes in their security and offered to be their financier, Grenvile’s subordinates would be all the more cautious and on the lookout for intruders.

It wasn’t the sort of mistake John Reese typically made. He thought three steps ahead of criminal lowlifes. The problem was, he would grudgingly admit later as he was lying in a bed at the library with the comfort of Finch’s weight causing the bed to dip beside him, his thoughts were otherwise engaged. His emotions were no less complicated. Somewhere between the first and second times he’d been shot since meeting Finch, Reese had decided he wanted Finch’s friendship. Somewhere between that second time and just a little too late to escape trouble with the number they were investigating, he’d apparently decided he wanted more than friendship. There was no way to be three steps ahead of a revelation like that and it was hard to focus on the task at hand.

Which is how Reese failed to think about the implications of his following Finch to the warehouse. At the time, it all seemed to happen very quickly. Comparing notes later with Finch, Reese agreed that everything that followed at least made sense... even if it wasn’t in their favor and certainly not to their credit. Because he followed Finch with his head in more of a tangle than it had even been around Jessica, Reese was spotted by one of Grenvile’s guards. Because he was spotted by one of the guards, the shrewd Grenvile correctly assumed Finch had backup and incorrectly assumed that the mild-mannered man before him had other men lying in wait. Having been so comfortable with his position for so long, the pendulum of Grenvile’s mind immediately swung too far in the other direction into the territory of paranoia.

The agent was hauled in and if the arms dealer had any doubts as to Finch and Reese being associates, they were dispelled by the long-suffering look Finch tried to keep behind a neutral facade and the apologetic concern that Reese couldn’t shove under his impassive mask quickly enough.

The gunfire wasn’t far behind.

…

The third time John Reese got shot, something in Finch snapped.

He wasn’t sure he could attribute it to the severity of the wound, as the event in the parking garage had been far more serious. Maybe it was because he watched it happen right in front of him, while he himself was in danger. Grenvile swung around with that ridiculous hand cannon he’d been waving about and had the honors of sending a bullet straight into Mr. Reese’s right shoulder. Even given the dark suit Reese wore, Finch was surprised anew at how much blood issued forth, how surprised Reese looked as his knees crumpled and sent him crashing to the floor. The only thing that kept Finch from a similar fate was that Reese had managed to squeeze off a shot of his own before he’d been hit.

After that, Finch thought the rain of gunfire to be fairly pointless as he scrambled to grab Reese and pull him to safety behind some stacked wooden crates. The tension in that warehouse had been thick enough when he first walked in, Grenvile and his associates very afraid of or angry at someone or something. They’d needed little reason to snap, though Finch rather felt any wounding that was going on at that point forward was from overenthusiastic friendly fire. He certainly hadn’t disengaged Reese’s gun from his hand. Not then.

The agent, bleeding and dazed, kept swiveling his head toward every rapport, every sound that ricocheted off the walls. Finch was working on some form of autopilot he wasn’t even sure he was programmed for: he’d peeled off his suit jacket and was applying pressure to the wound that was a little too close to Reese’s chest to really be considered a real shoulder shot. Finch was staying down, his body covering the taller man, and when he straightened a little it was to see that Reese’s eyelids were fluttering.

Reese, feeling confused and very tired more than any real sense of pain, managed to mutter, “Harold...?” before consciousness stopped being something he could participate in.

…

John Reese awoke to polar opposite feelings of extreme heat on his skin and a seeping cold across his right arm and down that side.

The cold was from the blood that continued to leak from him, an uncomfortable sensation that also made him weak and shaky.

The heat was from a fire.

Pushing himself up with his left arm, Reese looked around. He was in a parking lot not far from where he’d been discovered by Grenvile’s scout. Smoke poured from the building he’d just been inside and the flames were licking closer. It wouldn’t quite reach him but that wasn’t Reese’s problem. The warehouse was on fire and Finch was nowhere in sight.

“Finch!” Reese meant for that to be a shout. It escaped as a wheeze.

A voice drifted over first, “I’m here,” sounding calmer than anyone emerging from a burning building should sound, and was followed by a soot-streaked Finch in shirtsleeves. “We need to get going.”

Reese decided to attribute his confusion over all of this -- arms dealers, fires that seemed to come out of nowhere, Finch’s jacket tied around his right arm and shoulder -- as a consequence of blood loss. “Finch? Did you do this?”

“I don’t much like guns, Mr. Reese,” Finch said as he inelegantly dropped into a crouch at his side, “But I would have been an utter fool not to try to at least learn how they work.”

The flames of the warehouse were reflected in Finch’s glasses, where they wavered and danced across the lenses to be offset by the chill in his eyes.

“What...?” Reese was finding the formation of words more difficult than he would have liked; they came out sounding more gravelly than even his normal quiet tones.

“They’re named ‘firearms’ for a reason,” was the inscrutable reply. For a second or two, as he turned and stared at where they’d just come from, Finch’s cool mask slipped and even a dazed Reese could see that Finch looked murderously angry.

The moment passed as Finch turned back. Even injured as he was, Reese could see that the reason for the anger was an anxiety that wasn’t even remotely for Finch himself and the dangers he could have been in. No, Finch was worried about _Reese_ , the torment registering as equal parts concern and fury. Catching a glimpse of that, even as Finch softened his features into something more stoic, was humbling to Reese.

Finch dragged his glasses away from his face for a moment, presumably to wipe the lenses a little cleaner, and left a smudge of ash on his forehead. Reese absurdly thought this endearing. When Finch replaced his spectacles, Reese noticed what appeared to be a small cut on his partner’s face. “Finch, are you hurt?” Though he’d refrained from reaching up to wipe away the soot, Reese wanted to examine the cut.

His hand was batted away, though not unkindly. “Later, John,” Finch said softly. Knowing it wasn’t an answer to the question, he added, “Nothing that can’t wait. A few scratches. It’s more important that we get out of here. The police will be arriving shortly and I cannot imagine Detective Fusco will appreciate our staying to give a statement.”

“S’there gonna be anything left to... statement about?” Reese heard a slight slur to his words, knew they weren’t quite up to par. He had to stay awake and aware for Finch, though. Had to get Finch out of here.

Except it was Finch who was doing the thinking for both of them. He frowned slightly at hearing the unsteadiness to Reese’s cadence but answered as cavalierly as though they weren’t yards away from a roaring warehouse fire, as though Reese wasn’t still losing blood that soaked into Finch’s suit jacket. “Well, I wished to erase as much trace of our presence here as possible, so perhaps not. I can’t imagine the flames will be brought under control quickly.” That glacial look reappeared in his eyes. “It was also the best I could do to take care of Grenvile’s crew. Do you think you can stand?”

The juxtaposition of those two things -- the statement about lighting the warehouse on fire to rid them of the gun runners inside, that question of concern about his condition -- in the same matter-of-fact intonations, made Reese blink. “Guess I’ll have to,” he answered. It didn’t matter if he felt up to the task or not: Reese was going to stand and he was going to go wherever Finch told him to go. He was going to move until he simply couldn’t anymore.

With Finch’s help, the shorter man muzzling himself from making any of his own noises of physical discomfort as his battered frame was required to take more weight than it was used to, Reese slowly made it to his feet. He weaved and would have fallen if not for Finch’s arm around his waist, his shoulder against Reese’s unhurt side. Reese took the hint after a few seconds and draped that arm around Finch’s thinner shoulders, silently apologetic if he was causing Finch pain. His vision swam and Reese felt very far removed from all of this, from what should have been howling agony of a gunshot wound in his right shoulder. It was very likely that he was going into shock. “Talk to me, Harold.”

Finch needed no other prompting as he guided their uneven steps to his car. “Grenvile escaped. He might have been the only one. I used my phone to temporarily freeze all of his known bank accounts before the device was rendered more or less useless by the... environment I was subjecting it to. Still, that should be enough to keep him busy until we can get back to the library. Where I will dismantle his life, piece by piece.”

This was a lot for Reese to take in, the vehemence he heard threaded through what was originally meant to be a calming, informative tone. Still, he’d told Finch to talk to him. Trying to hold up his end of the conversation, to bring some levity into a situation that was overwhelmingly serious, Reese asked, “Boy, he really pissed you off, didn’t he?” He coughed, grimaced, and continued... because talking was preferable to fainting. “His guys haul me in, interrupting your business meeting, and you retaliate by burning down his place and planning to use your computers to hunt him down. That’s not exactly a proportional response.”

“He hurt you.” This was said so quietly that at first Reese thought he’d imagined it. But when Finch managed to prop Reese up against the car and fish out his keys, with the sounds of approaching sirens in the distance, he fixed Reese with a steady stare. “He hurt you. And I didn’t... couldn’t stop him.”

Reese’s brow furrowed. Finch left one hand on his unhurt shoulder as he unlocked the back seat, trying to judge whether or not Reese would fall. He’d just gotten the door open when Reese’s knees buckled and he started to slide down the side of the car. Finch caught him with a small grimace and his face was now close enough to Reese’s for the agent to see, even in the wavering light of the fire, the pain in the corners of Finch’s eyes. There were a few hasty smears of blood around small cuts in his face, splinters of wood from the crates -- a bullet or two or ten must have come very close to them -- and Finch was sweating with the effort of everything he’d done in the past ten minutes or so. But the pain he was feeling wasn’t physical. It was emotional, a reaction from the panic and helplessness he’d felt the minute Reese was hauled into the warehouse.

“Finch...” Reese began, but like so many sentences he’d started since regaining consciousness, it petered out before actual nouns and verbs could be strung together, before Reese could say what he needed to say.

When Finch leaned in, Reese really thought the other man was going to kiss him. Every close call, it seemed, had been building up to something like that. Things that had been left unsaid. Looks that could’ve been interpreted so many different ways. Hints of guarded hearts under complicated layers.

It wasn’t altogether a surprise for Reese to discover he was disappointed when Finch _didn’t_ kiss him. Still, the consolation prize was enough: Finch rested his forehead against Reese’s for a long moment, taking a shuddering breath. His lips lightly grazed Reese’s cheek as he spoke: “John. John, I need you to hold on a little longer, all right? I need you to hold on. You’ll be all right. You’ll be all right but we _have_ to leave.”

Reese nodded, swallowed. “Okay.” He managed to get his legs to bear weight long enough to move closer to the car door, where he didn’t so much enter the vehicle as he did let gravity take its course. Colliding firmly with the leather interior of the back seat, Reese couldn’t stop the weak impulse to put out his right arm to try and catch himself and jarred his shoulder. The swirling at the edges of his vision drifted closer to the center, mixed with an unpleasant greyness that Reese was sadly familiar with. He didn’t know when Finch had situated him a little better in the car and closed the door behind him, didn’t even know when Finch had gotten behind the wheel.

Finch began a litany that sounded very much like a mantra of what he’d said outside, a steady stream of, “I need you to hold on, John. Just hold on.” The last thing Reese felt was a distant lurch as the car leapt forward when Finch started it, put it into gear, and mashed his foot down on the gas pedal. This was a ride that seemed all-too-familiar, and even if it wasn’t a comfortable sense of familiarity, Reese surrendered to it knowing Finch was handling things. Awareness faded.

…

When he clawed his way to consciousness some time later, Reese was lying on his left side, his right arm bandaged across his chest in such a way as to keep it completely immobile. Without opening his eyes, Reese assessed his surroundings. The smell of antiseptic. Clean bandages, clean sheets... everything felt... clean. There was a dull ache in his shoulder. Reese didn’t know who’d tended to his wounds. It was serious enough that Finch probably hadn’t done it himself, but would calling in Dr. Tillman again prove too risky? He didn’t know. Right now, numbed by painkillers, Reese couldn’t find it in himself to care. He only cared about Finch: where he was, _how_ he was.

There had been muted sounds of fingers flying across a computer keyboard; as Reese listened, it abruptly stopped. Uneven footfalls -- a tread unique to Finch’s limping gait and one Reese would have been able to pick out of a crowd -- came closer, hesitated in the doorway.

“You’re awake.” An observation. Not a question.

Reese cracked one eye open, forced the other to follow. Finch was wearing one of his usual inscrutable expressions but fatigue and worry were both too strong to hide under now flimsy emotional armor. Reese dredged up a small smile. “Unwillingly,” he agreed, and was gratified when a similar smile briefly made its way onto Finch’s face.

It wavered and fell away. Finch was shy, looking at Reese in furtive bursts. It was such a change from the man who’d burned down a warehouse and navigated their frantic escape that Reese’s smile couldn’t help but gain ground.

Finch leaned against the door frame. “How do you feel?” he asked.

“Like I’ve been shot. Again.” Reese worried after those words left his mouth that the statements would somehow hurt Finch, remind him just how tenuous both of their positions were so long as they continued working on numbers from the machine.

But Finch simply rolled his eyes and made an impatient hand gesture, indicating that he wanted more of a response than that.

Reese raised his head a little, let it thump back down onto the pristine pillow. “Tired. Drugged. I’ll probably feel more later but for now let’s stick with tired and drugged.”

Nodding, Finch rested his weight on his good leg. “You were lucky.”

“I’ll probably feel more up to having _that_ conversation later, too,” noted Reese wryly.

Tension sputtered between them when Finch couldn’t find anything suitable to reply to that and subsided into silence. Reese adjusted his head again and really looked at Finch. He didn’t know how much time had passed since he’d been shot, since they escaped, but the software genius looked done in and then some. “Hey, Finch,” he went for nonchalance in his suggestion and only came across sounding worried, too, “You get any sleep?”

Finch’s raised eyebrow was an eloquent answer. ‘Like I could do that while I was waiting to see how you’d feel when you woke up?’ it seemed to inquire. Aloud, he replied, “I was tying up a few loose ends concerning our Mr. Grenvile.”

“And?”

“And I don’t believe he’ll be a problem for us, or anyone, anymore. He has no access to his assets. In addition to blocking him from any digital means he might use to make good his escape, I took the liberty of passing along some... misinformation... to a rival of his. That should keep Grenvile busy... right up until it makes him dead.” Though he didn’t smile, there was a grim satisfaction that was apparent in Finch’s bearing. It was a small glimpse of the piece of himself he kept hidden, the man who was cool under literal fire and who used an arsenal far more powerful than any firearm to accomplish his purposes. The man who built the machine.

When he was forced to do so, Finch didn’t just break people, the way Reese did. No, Finch _destroyed_ them, if need be. To protect the things in this life that Finch held dear, he could and would stop at nothing.

There was no triumph in his having done so here, however. Finch sighed, passed a weary hand over the back of his neck. His body protested his recent over-activity. “I should leave you to rest,” he concluded softly.

“Plenty of space right here,” Reese offered before his brain could catch up with his mouth and point out a dozen reasons why that might be a bad idea. He waited patiently for Finch to process his words.

After a few beats of silence, Finch gestured down at himself. The few small splinters and cuts on his face had been cleaned and tended to, but he was still wearing the vest and pants to the suit he’d been wearing for his meeting with Grenvile. His shirtsleeves were messily rolled. “I’m still--”

“Don’t worry about it, Finch,” urged Reese. Whether he was referring to the state of Finch’s attire or any emotional objection Finch might be trying to formulate as a way to get away from him, Reese didn’t care. He just didn’t want Finch to worry, and injected enough of that same worry into his tone to make Finch take notice.

Just when it seemed as though Finch wasn’t going to move, either in favor of coming closer to the bed or out the door in readiness to continue pretending there wasn’t a deeper connection between them than colleagues... Finch seemed to literally shake himself.

As he approached the bed, Finch toed his way a little awkwardly out of his shoes. His glasses were plucked away from his face and dropped on one of the nightstands. He stood beside the bed, his head tilted as he examined it with the same absorption he would give to his computer monitors. He couldn’t lie down behind Reese because then he’d wind up on his left side and while that would mean he could potentially wrap an arm around Reese -- if Mr. Reese would permit such a thing -- it would only cause his bad leg more pain.

In the end, Finch settled for easing himself to lie down on top of the sheets to Reese’s left, moving a pillow to cradle his neck as he reclined on his back.

Neither man said a word for several minutes. Whatever happened now, there was a fundamental shift in their dynamic and both Reese and Finch were nervous to see where this took them. As he was lying on his side facing Finch’s still form, Reese forced his eyes to stay open, to examine Finch in profile. He couldn’t tell what Finch was thinking. Very rarely could he ever understand everything that Finch was thinking at any one time. It was part of what drew Reese to Finch, how complicated and guarded he could be. How Finch was quite possibly just as damaged as he was.

Reese moved slowly, shifting a little closer to Finch, a little closer. Waiting for Finch to pull away. When he didn’t, Reese settled his head in the space where Finch’s neck joined his shoulder and took a steadying breath. The charred smell of smoke was strong as Reese knew it would be. Beneath that, however, was the odd mixture of old books and leather, of faintly metallic circuitry that was so very Finch that Reese took comfort in it. His arm felt better when he rested it at Finch’s side, and Reese didn’t feel quite so confused or numb with his head tucked against him like this.

Just as slowly as Reese had moved, once Finch was sure Reese was settled there -- and when Reese had breathed in like that, Finch held his own breath -- he, too, moved a little. Just his head, turning his neck as far as it would go. When that wasn’t far enough to do what he wanted, when his fused spine allowed no more movement, a low note of distress and frustration escaped Finch. Reese seemed to understand what Finch wanted and moved his own head a little more, to tuck it under Finch’s chin.

A sigh escaped Finch as he squeezed his eyes shut. The something in him that had snapped when he saw Reese get shot for the third time in their acquaintance: it tightened in his chest again, the fear and concern and regard and yes, maybe even love. It was Finch’s turn to be unable to form words. He could only hope his actions would speak for him. Finch moved slightly, pressed a kiss to Reese’s hair, lingering so that Reese could feel the action for what it was. A simple declaration, nothing that needed explaining and nothing that Reese needed to do anything about right now. It was just something Finch needed to do. It was something he wished he’d done sooner. It was a gesture he hoped he’d have the chance to repeat, to discuss, to further... when Reese recovered.

Finch took a shaky inhalation of his own. Rubbing alcohol and remnants of Betadine clung to Reese, nearly obliterating the undertones of gunpowder and coffee that Finch associated with the man beside him. His breath, when he released it, hitched in his throat.

“Shhh,” Reese murmured in the softest whisper possible, trying not to shatter the fragile moment. “Need you to hold on, Harold. Just hold on. We’ll be all right.”

Reese thought he detected the motion of a nod as his head was again tucked under Finch’s chin. Finch wasn’t able to get his breathing to completely calm by the time Reese drifted off back to sleep but the reality of Reese -- warm, alive, safe, beside him -- was enough for Finch to permit himself to finally rest.

…

end


End file.
